Abbey Dore, Herefordshire

The monks and the birds

Near the border of England and Wales, deep in Herefordshire’s Golden Valley (the valley of the River Dore), among high hedges and garrulous rookeries, within sight of the Black Mountains with their evocatively named heights (Hay Bluff, Lord Hereford’s Knob), and close to one of my routes to the book-lovers’ haven of Hay on Wye, lies the sandstone Dore Abbey, home of the royal arms in my previous post. It’s the kind of quiet spot the Cistercians favoured, away from the distractions of the world and the city, where they could farm in peace (they were among the most successful sheep farmers in the Middle Ages), and build their monasteries and their communities.

Most of Britain’s greatest Cistercian abbeys, such as Yorkshire’s Fountains and Rievaulx, Gloucestershire’s Hailes, and Tintern in the valley of the Wye, are ruins now, but at Dore Abbey, part of the building – the choir, transept, and crossing of the original church – remains in service for parish worship. In the monks’ time, where there are trees in the left-hand part of my photograph above there was a long nave, and its disappearance accounts for the unusual shape of the church. As we look at this fragment, though, with its continuous background noise of cawing rooks, the tall pointed lancet windows give an idea of the building’s strong but simple Gothic architecture.

 
It is even more impressive inside. Repeated lancet windows, pointed arches, and piers with multiple shafts line the choir. Light pours in from the splayed upper windows, creating patterns of light where the arches are deeply moulded. There is a minimum of carved ornament (the austere Cistercians eschewed the sort of rich foliate carving that covered other Gothic churches of the time)  but a strong sense of linear pattern. The arches and mouldings create a clear sense of the kind of space the monks wanted – and it is a rare treat to find it all surviving as an interior, roofed and used and protected from the elements and enhanced with fine furnishings from the 17th-century restoration. And so quiet too, in little known southwestern Herefordshire, in a corner where now the rooks must far outnumber the human population but the lucky few who are left can enjoy a place of peace and a setting for contemplation.

Abbey Dore, Herefordshire

The king's arms

As Britain is celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, I thought it might be appropriate to share an example of the royal arms from an English Parish church. Royal arms have been displayed in English churces for centuries, but especially since Henry VIII assumed leadership of the Church of England in 1534. The composition of the arms has changed over the years, with the comings and goings of different monarchs and ruling houses, and during the Commonwealth (1649–60) royal arms were removed, to be replaced later. The result is that English churches display arms from many different periods, with the 18th and 19th centuries well represented.

Sometimes a coat of arms from before the Commonwealth escaped the hands of Cromwell’s supporters – or was replaced when the monarchy was restored. An example of one of these Stuart coats of arms is in the wonderful gothic church at Abbey Dore in Herefordshire, a building that began as a Cistercian abbey 1147. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, the building and land passed to the Scudamore family, who dismantled many of the abbey buildings and sold off the stone. In the 1630s, John Viscount Scudamore restored the abbey as a parish church, and amongst his gifts to the building was a magnificent classical screen topped with this coat of arms, which is that of Charles I. The characterful lion and unicorn are surrounded by vigorous carved wooden scrolls in the style of the time. The detached tail of the lion is a poignant touch: I think of it as an accidental symbol of interrupted Stuart rule.